Students for Freethought @ Ohio State discussion questions:

1. Your roommate, who you’ve lived with for three and half weeks now, asks you if you’d like to come to church with them. How do you reply? How would this be different if it were your best friend whom you’ve known since Kindergarten?

2. Do you ever feel self-conscious when discussing your beliefs with your friends and acquaintances? Does knowing that you may have unpopular views ever stop you from discussing your true beliefs?

3. At Thanksgiving dinner your family, who is so happy to see you after your long months away from home, asks you to lead the prayer. What do you do?

4. One of your beloved family members dies and you are asked to go to the funeral. However, it’s going to be a very traditionally religious funeral. Would this affect your likelihood to go there? How would you act when there (e.g. bowing head during prayer)?

5. How open is your family about discussing religious views and beliefs? In what way do you feel this has affected the evolution of your views and “spiritual growth”? Also, do you feel this has affected your ability to discuss your views with others?

6. How do you feel about discussing your views with co-workers? Do you feel that the workplace is or is not a place where religious views and/or ideologies should be discussed?

7. You’re walking across the oval when someone in a bright yellow tee-shirt (inside joke) walks up to and says “Can I ask you a personal question?” You say okay and they ask you “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your lord and personal savior?” How do you respond? How does the fact that they are a stranger influence your response?

8. Your sibling is becoming increasingly religious. They’re even planning on taking a pilgrimage to the “holy land”. They ask you if you would like to come with them. How do you reply?

9. You have a new person you’re dating and are very fond of. They tell you that they believe that you may be their soul mate. How do you respond to this? How do you feel about dating people with different religious views than you?

10. Many years from now you have a child and one day they announce that they are a fundamentalist (of whatever religion you want) and that your life will be shallow and incomplete unless you convert as well. What do you say to them? What do you do?

1. Almost all religious traditions have ceremonies to mark the end of
a person's life. Should the freethought community have similar
ceremonies? What sort of things should they be sure to include?
What sorts of things should be avoided?

2. Imagine a relative of yours passes away. You knew the loved one
reasonably well and had discovered that they were not at all
religious. Your family is planning a religious funeral. Would you
bring up the views of the departed loved one to your family? Would
you speak at the funeral and let people know what the loved one
thought about religion? What would you do if people in your family
started theorizing about the loved one now being in hell?

3. How large of a role do you think the fear of death plays in many
people's religious views? Do you think that it prevents people from
using their reason and skepticism to the fullest?

4. Are you afraid of death? Disappointed about its inevitability?
How does knowing that you will only be around for a limited amount of
time influence the way you live your life? Do you think that the
inevitability of death makes the happiness and accomplishments of
this life any less meaningful? Does it make them more meaningful?
Given the opportunity to live forever, or say, for a thousand, or
million years, would you take it?

5. When someone close to you dies, how do you deal with it? What
sort of thoughts do you take comfort in? Are there special things
you do to honor their memory? What about when you hear of a disaster
where hundreds or thousands were killed?

6. Do you think people should be allowed to end their own lives?
Should there be restrictions? Should a teenager have the same right
to end their life as an old person with a painful, untreatable
illness? Do you think family pressure from younger members of a
family for an older member to end their own life could become
divisive and destructive?

1. There’s a person you’re very attracted to in one of your boring GEC courses. One day after class, you approach them and strike up a conversation, with the intent to ask them out on a date. During the conversation it comes up that they’re a 16 year-old who is here through a program for gifted students. Would you still ask them out?

Joe: First off, GEC stands for General Education Cirriculum. They’re the classes everyone in a certain study area is required to take. This question had a good amount of consensus in my group that built, basically saying it would depend on the person. This was one of the better questions for my group.

2. Is it okay for friends to have sex for recreational purposes? Do you think you can really have sex without developing emotional attachments?

Joe: This question worked out well because of the differences in opinion on attachment creation. It fizzeld out quickly because it turned into a situation of “whatever works for you.”

3. An acquaintance you’re attracted to has a little too much to drink at a party and starts hitting on you. After a little banter back and forth, it becomes clear that they’re trying to get you into bed. Would you take them up on their offer, despite the fact that their judgment is clearly blurred?

Joe: Even if anyone was thinking “Heck ya, I’d nail her”, they wouldn’t admit to anyone. This was a dud question with no difference of opinion.

4. Is it wrong to have sexual relations with animals if the animals included are not being physically harmed?

Joe: I know my group didn’t get to answer this question but from hearsay this once was one of the better conversation provokers. Some people balked at the question due to a grossness factor.

5. Let’s say you had herpes, an incurable (although not fatal) disease that causes much discomfort. If you used latex barriers for all forms of penetration (oral, anal, vaginal), would it then be ethical to continue having sex with people? How would people knowing you had the disease affect your decision?

Joe: This one, surprisingly, was a source of easy consensus. I think it may have been a situation once again of not wanting to admit to being “devious”. That or us freethinkers are just that nice.

6. You’re the boss and one of the employees who you are quite interested in is coming on to you a lot. Is it okay to date them? How about having sex with them?

Joe: Fell into the “would depend on the situation” thing.

7. You ask someone out on a date and they agree. During the date they tell you that they are married, but still interested in seeing you. What do you do?

Joe: Pretty much everyone said “no” and then twiddled their thumbs.

8. If two people in a happy relationship have certain sexual needs and/or fantasies that they do not share and are unwilling to participate in, is it okay for them to seek out that need/fantasy from others outside their relationship?

Joe: I think we puled this question because their was a speaker who was going to talk about open relationships the week after.

9. Are there any fantasies or fetishes that you consider “just plain wrong”?

Joe: This question fell too easily into the “Whatever someone wants to do is his/her own business” category.

10. On a trip abroad, you slipped and ended up having a one-night stand with a person you will very likely never see again. Would you tell your partner when you returned?

Joe: This was probably the best conversation-starter for my group. This was one where people were actually willing to admit that they might hide it from their partner.

One thing we did that worked out nicely, in lieu of a regular meeting wherein we just sort of addled about aimlessly talking about interesting things, was:

We played a game I got at Goodwill for about 3.00$ u.s. called "A Question of Scruples". It might be called "Scruples" but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, it's a discussion-based card game where participants remove question cards from their hand by posing them to other players, trying to pick the person who will answer their question with an answer (e.g. "Yes","No", "Depends") they get at random from another deck. The fun bit is that due to a challenge rule, any player may challenge another player's answer. Each person gets a chance to make their respective case, then all parties vote. It's fun, and funny, and stirs up feelings both good and bad. The main thing is to talk about the decidedly ambiguous questions that are posed...

I invite you to try this link:

http://boardgamegeeks.com/game/1748

for information about the game. It's probably not easy to find but if you're lucky you can get it "cheep". It occurs to me a similar thing could be done with any of the various "Book of Questions", a cup full of "Yes" or "No" or "Depends" tokens, and a clever room full of people...

Cheers,

Noah Stevens
Acting President, UWF Freethinkers
Pensacola, FL

These are all great ideas. What else has worked? What hasn't?